Looking over the Shoulder of the Creator of “A Christmas Carol”

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via documents.nytimes.com

Today was Tuesday, and each Tuesday morning I work with 4th and 5th grade students in the tech lab. For the most part we continue with work and projects that the students have started with our Music/Technology teacher, Tony Jamesbarry. While in the lab this morning I saw a tweet from Ira Socal @irasocol about an article in the New York Times about a manuscript on display at the Morgan Library. It is the original manuscript of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The article discussed the the author's work and also pointed to several online interactive features associated with the manuscript including a page that allowed you to view each page of the manuscript. As Ira noted, this is not something you could find in your local library. I shared this with my 5th grade students and the consensus response was "pretty cool." We spent a bit of time talking about how Dickens might of worked on the document and compared it to their use of paper drafts and of Google Docs. It was a great conversation that was made possible because the Morgan Library and the New York Times made this document available. The ability to share this type of document via the Internet is something that continues to amaze me.

Posted via web from Tim Lauer